Samuel Mullet Sr., who is on trial in U.S. District Court in Cleveland in a landmark federal hate crimes case.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The hate crimes trial of Amish bishop Samuel Mullet and 15 of his followers came to an abrupt end Tuesday after federal prosecutors concluded eight days of testimony and the defense lawyers rested their case without calling a single witness.

Closing arguments from the prosecutors and 16 defense lawyers will be held throughout the day today, after which the jury will be instructed on the law and begin deliberations.

The defendants are charged with waging a series of beard and hair cutting attacks on religious enemies and estranged family members last fall -- an unprecedented application of a landmark 2009 federal law that expanded government powers to prosecute hate crimes.

The trial has attracted national and international attention, offering a rare glimpse into Ohio’s reclusive and normally peaceful Amish community.

Mullet's attorney Edward Bryan said outside court that the defense has no legal obligation to present a defense. He added that it is a defendant's right not to testify, and the judge will instruct the jury that it cannot hold that decision against the defendants. It is the burden of the prosecution to prove the guilt of the defendants, not the defendants' burden to prove their innocence.

Moments before the jury was told the evidence phase of the trial was over and they were released for the day, defense lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster to throw out the eight criminal charges due to a lack of evidence. But the judge denied the request.

"I think a reasonable jury could conclude that there was a general religious motivation behind all of these attacks, and that the cases should go to the jury," Polster said.

He cited a quote that Mullet gave to news reporters shortly after the beard-cuttings in which Mullet said, "We know what we did and why we did it."

"The jury could conclude the 'we' included himself, that he approved it and ratified it," Polster said.

Mullet, 66, the spiritual and social leader of the Bergholz Amish community, located in Jefferson County about 100 miles from Cleveland, is accused of ordering beard-cutting attacks, but is not charged with participating in them.

View full sizeCourtesy U.S. Attorneys officeU.S. District Court official in Cleveland, Ohio, on Wednesday, agreed to release only a black and white photocopy of a photo shown in court during the hate crimes trial of 16 Amish defendants. Prosecutors had shown this a photo of defendant Johnny Mullet using one hand to grab the long, white beard of Raymond Hershberger, a 79-year-old Amish bishop, and using the other hand to chop.
As Mullet chopped, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bridget Brennan said, Hershberger's wife screamed and a boy cried, "Don't cut Grandpa's beard."

Bryan argued that his client did not conspire with anyone to commit a hate crime, that he never ordered the beard cuttings, and that the attacks did not constitute hate crimes because they had non-religious motivations based on personal disputes.

Earlier in the day, Donald Kraybill, one of the country's leading experts on the Amish religion, testified that the radical practices of Mullet's breakaway sect of 18 families bore all of the trademarks of a cult. He called the Mullet clan a "lone ranger group" that vilified the outside world.

"There was ample evidence that since 2009 they no longer held church services, and showed a complete disregard for traditional Amish doctrine," testified Kraybill, a cultural anthropologist and professor from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

He expressed disbelief and disgust at the self-imposed discipline advocated by Mullet, including spending up to 12 days at a time living in a chicken coop, spanking of adults, submitting themselves to voluntary hair- and beard-cutting, and engaging in sexual relations with the wives of his followers.

"I've never heard of that in the history of the Amish church," Kraybill testified. "It's not an Amish thing."

Kraybill cited a historic 2006 bishop's meeting in Ulysses, Pa., at which more than 300 bishops learned about Mullet's shunnings and how some members of his clan were fearful of Mullet and were abandoning the Bergholz settlement in the middle of the night.

The bishops voted to overturn a half-dozen of Mullet's excommunications of Bergholz Amish members who had challenged his rulings or offended him by moving away. The conclave decided Mullet's excommunications were not made for biblical or religious reasons, and that he failed to consult his congregation, as required by Amish law.

"This was like an earthquake in the Amish world," Kraybill said.

Mullet was furious at the rebuke. Federal prosecutors pointed to the bishops' decision as the triggering motive for several of the beard-cutting attacks, including that of bishop Raymond Hershberger of Holmes County.

"We never thought it would come to something like this," Hershberger testified. "I never realized Sam felt this way about me until this came up."

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